noted.

so about that whole we are all infected business, i dont know if in the comics the mechanism is revealed, so:

when you are bit by a walker, it infects you and you die. symptoms include high fever and...? then an arbitrary amount of time passes and you become a walker with limited brain function.
you (and everyone) is already infected with whatever etiological agent that causes you to become a walker when you die.
so what kills you? the bite? why are people infected, but not showing symptoms of infection?

Every one is infected with this "virus".

When you die, if the brain is intact, you come back as a walker.

And the bite itself is not lethal, it's the fever that comes with it that is.
So you die, and you wake up as a walker.

So technically, the bite is not how they get you, you are already fucked.

probably posted already but you can walker yourself using a picture. very well made

http://www.deadyourself.com/walkers

thats pretty much what i just summarized. im talking about a missing logical connection that i havent quite figured out.

so what causes the fever? a bite itself wouldnt cause a high enough fever unless there is some other microbial agent in a walker mouth. i say mouth because ive seen walker blood splatter, and im sure eyes, open wounds/cuts, and other things in contact with walker fluids dont seem to cause any trouble.

i guess i really want some more back-story in season 4

there's no additional explanation in the comics as to why a bite or scratch causes a fever. I imagine that the walker just creates an infection that if allowed to spread causes the fever and subsequent death.

agreed. ending was bad. they really let everyone down when nothing was resolved. i mean is the governer gonna be seen again? is he gonna attack with just the 3 left? or just randomly run into a whole bunch of new survivors go do his bidding.

Well, take this for example. We are all infected with the cold virus. We don't feel the symptoms except in extreme conditions, such as cold weather or malnourishment, where our immune system gets weakened or overworked. But otherwise, our immune system is generally strong enough to keep the symptoms at bay.

However, when someone with a cold sneezes on us (or something similar), even though we're not under the aforementioned extreme conditions, the extra dose of the virus is enough to overwhelm our immune system.

So I imagine it's the same with the zombie infection. The quantity of the infection one carries from typical exposure means is probably so small that the immune system can always fight it easily, even under extreme conditions, and it could only multiply when the immune system is completely shut down (you're dead). However, when exposed to a large dose of it (from a bite; similar to a cold person sneezing on you), it becomes enough to overwhelm your immune system even while you're alive.

At least that's how I imagine it would work.

This post was edited by AnomanderRake on Apr 7 2013 02:21am

You have rotting corpses, if they were to bite you and you don't immediately remove the area, it would most likely give you an intense infection and fever which would kill you. I would assume that a rotting corpse would be carrying some sort of disease in its saliva. Much like a Komodo, such dirty saliva it could kill you even if you don't bleed out

This post was edited by MeatStick101 on Apr 7 2013 01:10pm

Do you guys think that the virus is passed on through the womb? I'm pretty sure that in our world some diseases are passed on, others are not, and some others just have a chance to be passed on.

Judith didn't exist when the initial event happened. I am most interested to find out if she is infected.